Professional Journal Article Review By Lionel Tessier Article Name: Using Pop Culture to Teach Introductory Biology Pryor, G.S. The American Biology Teacher, volume 70, No. 7, September 2008 pp 396 to 399 Summary: The author, Gregory S. Pryor argues that today’s students are more captivated by storylines, characters, and gossip provided by pop culture than anything else and if science teachers were to incorporate pop culture into the design of their lessons they would be able to get their students engaged in the lesson. He points out that this would be especially true for high school students who are not pursuing biology as a major.
Pryor gives two examples on how to incorporate pop culture into the lesson plan. ·The Evolutionary Fitness Challenge -Research and document fitness by looking at quantity of offspring for pop culture heroes. ·The Evolution of Spam by Natural Selection - Investigate how spam producers modify spam to circumvent the spam filters that are utilized to eliminate spam. He postulates that using pop culture as a vehicle for making biology acceptable to today’s students is an opportunity waiting to be explored.
Personal Reaction: In class there was much discussion concerning the importance of engaging the student into the learning experience. We agreed that it was especially important that we activate prior knowledge as well as initializing engagement in the lesson. We discussed using a question to begin the lesson to activate the prior learning of our students. What better way to grab their attention then to ask a question on a topic they themselves are discussing when they are not in class, like the cafeteria or bus stop, when there are no teachers around. Pop culture subjects interwoven with fundamental science lessons will not only grab the student’s initial attention, it will provide a useful mechanism for developing that retrieval of information skill teachers are trying to foster in their students. Associating science knowledge with pop culture memories will be long-lasting and effectiv
Article Name: Using Pop Culture to Teach Introductory Biology
Pryor, G.S. The American Biology Teacher, volume 70, No. 7, September 2008 pp 396 to 399
Summary: The author, Gregory S. Pryor argues that today’s students are more captivated by storylines, characters, and gossip provided by pop culture than anything else and if science teachers were to incorporate pop culture into the design of their lessons they would be able to get their students engaged in the lesson. He points out that this would be especially true for high school students who are not pursuing biology as a major.
Pryor gives two examples on how to incorporate pop culture into the lesson plan.
· The Evolutionary Fitness Challenge -Research and document fitness by looking at quantity of offspring for pop culture heroes.
· The Evolution of Spam by Natural Selection - Investigate how spam producers modify spam to circumvent the spam filters that are utilized to eliminate spam.
He postulates that using pop culture as a vehicle for making biology acceptable to today’s students is an opportunity waiting to be explored.
Personal Reaction: In class there was much discussion concerning the importance of engaging the student into the learning experience. We agreed that it was especially important that we activate prior knowledge as well as initializing engagement in the lesson. We discussed using a question to begin the lesson to activate the prior learning of our students. What better way to grab their attention then to ask a question on a topic they themselves are discussing when they are not in class, like the cafeteria or bus stop, when there are no teachers around.
Pop culture subjects interwoven with fundamental science lessons will not only grab the student’s initial attention, it will provide a useful mechanism for developing that retrieval of information skill teachers are trying to foster in their students. Associating science knowledge with pop culture memories will be long-lasting and effectiv